Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Oklahoma executes man who murdered his wife

An Oklahoma man convicted of killing his wife with help from a relative of his mistress to collect insurance money was put to death by injection on March 15, 2012, reported The Asssociated Press.

Timothy Shaun Stemple shook his head no when asked if he had any last words, as members of his family and his wife's sat separately from each other watching the condemned man through glass.

The 46-year-old Stemple gasped for about 20 seconds, his eyes opened and he groaned. He then laid still with closed eyes and his face turned pale. He was pronounced dead at 6:11 p.m.

His family had asked the governor to stay the execution so that medical testimony disputing his accomplice's account of the 1996 attack on Trisha Stemple could be heard in court. Stemple's mother, his 21-year-old daughter and his sisters held each other by their hands and arms as he was being put to death. One of his sisters held his crying daughter's face close to hers.

Afterward, Trisha Stemple's sister, Deborah Ruddick-Bird, said the day was not about Timothy Stemple. She said it was "about justice, finality and closure for my gorgeous sister, Trisha, and my family."

"Today we put a period at the end of the chapter that held us captive for far too long," Ruddick-Bird told reporters. "Today we breathe again. Today we move forward and move on."

Trisha Stemple, 30, was beaten with a plastic-covered baseball bat and run over by a pickup truck Oct. 24, 1996, along a Tulsa highway. Her husband maintained his innocence throughout the trial and appeals process. And at a clemency hearing last month, he declined to address Pardon and Parole Board members.

The board denied his plea for clemency.

"The state of Oklahoma murdered an innocent man today," his mother, Lia Stemple, told The Associated Press by phone after the execution. "I don't want vengeance but I want the truth to be known so this doesn't happen to another family. My son was a noble man."

Stemple's execution at the state prison in McAlester is the first of three scheduled over the next two months in Oklahoma. Last month, Department of Corrections officials said the state has four doses left of the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, an anesthetic that manufacturers have objected to selling for use in executions.

About Matt

An analysis of crime and punishment from the perspective of a former prosecutor and current criminal justice practitioner.
The views expressed on this blog are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions or postions of any county, state or federal agency.